Cloud Safety Tip 2: Keep Backup Onsite

Part 2 of a five-part series on what to keep in mind for cloud security.

In part 1 we considered the importance of both having a map of your company’s network in case of an emergency.

A huge selling point for the cloud is its capacity for backup and disaster recovery. By storing your data offsite in secure, high powered servers you are buying peace of mind, protection against disaster, data loss, and theft. Done right, cloud computing optimizes performance and keep costs down with economies of scale. Most physical servers aren’t optimizing their compute power. Through sharing virtual space with your service provider’s high powered servers along with their other clients, both storage space and computing power are maximized, allowing lower cost to the end user.

Even with the added benefit of server imaging, and robust disaster recovery in the cloud, industry leader in business continuity Veeam recommends the following two measures for maximizing safety. You’ll want to discuss these with your cloud provider, since either they or you will want to take these protective measures:

D2D2C

3-2-1 Rule

D2D2C is a rule of thumb that refers to the various copies of your mission critical data. To ensure maximum protection and ease of access, Veeam recommends copying data to a first disk, then to a second disk, then to the cloud. Many companies prefer the added protection of copying to yet a second cloud, which would make the acronym a bit long at D2D2C2C.

The 3-2-1 rule is the underlying principle of the D2D2C acronym. That is, for protection at all times make sure you have three copies of data, on two different media, with at least one hosted offsite. That’s 3 copies on 2 media, with 1 offfsite.

Again, the purpose in sharing this information is to provide tips to keep you protected, if you’re taking charge of your cloud data storage, or to equip you with questions in case you’re engaging with a service provider. Keeping a backup onsite allows for the most immediate, practical means of accessing your data, even as cloud computing provides simple and ever-evolving disaster recovery solutions. Make sure you keep track of where this is stored, given the positional turnover in many organizations today and stay as protected as possible.

In part three we’ll discuss the importance of addressing end user experience issues.